The subject application is related to subject matter disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application No.Heill-284731 filed in Oct. 5, 1999 in Japan, to which the subject application claims priority under the Paris Convention and which is incorporated by reference herein.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to an improved electronic speaking document viewer, an authoring system for creating and editing electronic contents to be reproduced by the electronic speaking document viewer, a semiconductor storage card and an information provider server. The electronic speaking document viewer serves to convert text to speech sounds in accordance with the text data as contained in a semiconductor storage card inserted to the electronic speaking document viewer.
2. Prior Art
The text culture has been supported by printed matters on paper to be viewed with naked eyes for long years. However, there have come electronic document viewers such as the e-BOOK (commercial name) broadly distributed in U.S.A.
The electronic document viewer of this kind serves to simply provide typographic images on a character display of the electronic document viewer. The typographic images are reproduced from a storage medium such as the memory space of the electronic document viewer or an external portable storage in which text data is stored in the form of character codes or typographic graphic images.
On the other hand, there are practical applications for providing speech from an electronic book package in the form of storage mediums such as cassette tapes, compact discs and so forth through an appropriate electronic speaking device.
However, in the case of the exemplary prior art technique as explained above, there are following shortcomings as described below.
(1) It is inevitable to cause the user""s inconvenience and discomfort when he continues reading through an electronic document viewer for a long time because the typographic images as reproduced on the character display of the electronic document viewer is substantially poorer as compared with letters printed on paper, causing eyestrain, and can not be readily used in his life. In some cases, clear text images printed on paper are directly digitized as still image data for the purpose of increasing the resolution. In this case, however, there are shortcomings that the readily use of the electronic document viewer becomes furthermore difficult and can not be easily put into practice since the resolution of the character display and the available memory space have to be increased.
(2) The field of the electronic book packages is recognized as belonging to another category, such as radio plays, different than the text culture in which are read letters printed on paper, and therefore the electronic book packages are not such as competing with or replacing the text culture based upon printed matters on paper. On the other hand, if raw speech is stored in a storage medium, the data size as required is significantly increased as greatly larger than the data size of the corresponding text data. Because of this, the amount of information available in the form of raw speech data is significantly limited as compared with the amount of information given form text images printed on paper so that it seems not practicable as considered from the text culture allowing the readily use of books.
In brief, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved electronic speaking document viewer accommodating a semiconductor storage card in the form of a detachable card type storage medium in which text data consisting of letters and intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read said text data, said electronic speaking document viewer comprising:
a text data display unit for displaying the text data consisting of letters stored in said semiconductor storage card;
a speech synthesis unit for performing speech synthesis on the basis of the intermediate language data stored in said semiconductor storage card;
a synthesized speech outputting unit for outputting the synthesized speech as synthesized by means of said speech synthesis unit; and
a control unit for synchronizing said text data display unit and said synthesized speech outputting unit with each other.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that said text data comprises image data and said intermediate language data is generated from typographic data contained in said text data to indicate the rules of how to phonetically read the typographic data.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that the phonogramic data of said intermediate language data consists of katakana character strings.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that said intermediate language data includes synchronization codes for synchronizing said text data display unit and said synthesized speech outputting unit with each other; and wherein said control unit serves to synchronize said text data display unit and said synthesized speech outputting unit with each other on the basis of the synchronization codes.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved electronic speaking document viewer accommodating a semiconductor storage card in the form of a detachable card type storage medium in which unencrypted text data consisting of letters and encrypted intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read said text data, said electronic speaking document viewer comprising:
a text data display unit for displaying the text data consisting of letters stored in said semiconductor storage card;
a decryption unit for decrypting the encrypted intermediate language data contained in said semiconductor storage card;
a speech synthesis unit for performing speech synthesis on the basis of the intermediate language data as decrypted by means of said decryption unit; and
a synthesized speech outputting unit for outputting the synthesized speech as synthesized by means of said speech synthesis unit.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved electronic speaking document viewer accommodating a semiconductor storage card in the form of a detachable card type storage medium in which encrypted text data consisting of letters and encrypted intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read said text data, said electronic speaking document viewer comprising:
a decryption unit for decrypting the encrypted text data and the encrypted intermediate language data contained in said semiconductor storage card;
a text data display unit for displaying the text data consisting of letters stored in said semiconductor storage card and decrypted by means of said decryption unit;
a speech synthesis unit for performing speech synthesis on the basis of the intermediate language data as decrypted by means of said decryption unit; and
a synthesized speech outputting unit for outputting the synthesized speech as synthesized by means of said speech synthesis unit.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that signals indicative of forwarding and rewinding are detected; wherein when the signal indicative of forwarding is detected during the period in which said electronic speaking document viewer is outputting the synthesized speech, the sentence to be reproduced with synthesized speech is determined in accordance with the repeat count of the forwarding signal in order to forward to the top of a sentence after the current sentence and to perform the speech synthesis; and wherein when the signal indicative of rewinding is detected during the period in which said electronic speaking document viewer is outputting the synthesized speech, the sentence to be reproduced with synthesized speech is determined in accordance with the repeat count of the rewinding signal in order to back to the top of a sentence preceding the current sentence and to perform the speech synthesis.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that, when a signal indicative of indexing is detected during the period in which said electronic speaking document viewer is outputting the synthesized speech, an index is inserted to said text data and said intermediate language data at the location which is just phonetically reproduced when the indexing signal is detected and wherein, when a signal indicative of reproducing the indexed portion of said text data and said intermediate language data, the corresponding indexed data is reproduced.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that when the signal indicative of reproducing the indexed portion is detected, said text data as indexed is displayed by said text data display unit while the speech synthesis is conducted by said speech synthesis unit with the intermediate language data corresponding to said text data as indexed.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved authoring system for an electronic speaking document viewer comprising:
a language parser unit for performing language parsing process with text data consisting of character codes in order to generate intermediate language data corresponding to the rules of how to phonetically read the text data.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that the encryption unit is provided for encrypting the intermediate language data generated from said language parser unit or said proof correction unit.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved semiconductor storage card comprising:
a non-volatile memory for storing unencrypted text data based on which typographic images is displayed by means of a typographic images displaying unit of an electronic viewer and for storing encrypted intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read the text content data, wherein speech synthesis is performed by means of a speech synthesis unit of the electronic viewer with reference to said unencrypted text data and said encrypted intermediate language data; and
a thin case for supporting said non-volatile memory.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that said non-volatile memory comprising:
a first storage region for storing said text data;
a second storage region for storing said intermediate language data; and
a third read only storage region for storing an ID number for identifying the semiconductor storage card itself, wherein said intermediate language data is encrypted by the use of the ID number.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved information provider server comprising:
an information database for storing text data consisting of letters and intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read said text data in the form of uncrypted plain data; and
an information provider server connected to said information database,
wherein said information provider server contains an encryption program, receives a request for said text data and said intermediate language data together with data for use in encryption through a network, encrypts said intermediate language data by the use of said data for use in encryption and sends a response accompanied with said intermediate language data as encrypted together with said text data through said network.
It will be desired to prevent the encrypted intermediate language data from being pirated for example by making use of the ID number of the storage medium such as said semiconductor storage card as data or part of data used for generating said encryption key by means of an encryption program in said information provider server.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that said text data is also encrypted by the use of said data for use in encryption and wherein said information provider server sends a response accompanied with said intermediate language data as encrypted together with said text data through said network.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that said data for use in encryption is an ID number of a semiconductor storage card in the form of a detachable card type storage medium in which said text data consisting of letters and said intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read said text data, and said data for use in encryption is used to generate an encryption key.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that said text data and said intermediate language data is such as decrypted and reproduced by an electronic speaking document viewer accommodating said semiconductor storage card, said electronic speaking document viewer comprising:
a text data display unit for displaying the text data consisting of letters stored in said semiconductor storage card;
a speech synthesis unit for performing speech synthesis on the basis of the intermediate language data stored in said semiconductor storage card;
a synthesized speech outputting unit for outputting the synthesized speech as synthesized by means of said speech synthesis unit; and
a control unit for synchronizing said text data display unit and said synthesized speech outputting unit with each other.